What is Gerald Elias reading?

I'm currently finishing up a month-long concert tour to Peru, my sixth extended visit to that fascinating country since 2005. I was a student of archeology/anthropology back in the day, and I've become absorbed by the incredibly rich archeological record left by ancient Peruvians. Most of us tend to think "Inca" when it comes to Peru, but the Incan empire was just the icing on the cake, existing for only about 150 years until they were conquered by the Spanish invaders in the mid-1500s. Peruvian prehistory, though, dates back 5,000 years (so far), not just 500, with regional civilizations that existed for centuries that were at least as advanced as any other contemporaries in rest of the world, including Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

All of these Peruvian cultures were preliterate, so their stories are told only by stone, metals, ceramics, and fabrics. But what complex and fascinating stories! And what unsurpassed craftsmanship! It's not easy to get a handle on the immensity, richness, and complexity of prehistoric Peru, which is why I'm currently reading...[read on]

The fourth book in the series featuring the irascible but loveable amateur sleuth Daniel Jacobus

Vaclav Herza, the last of a dying breed of great but tyrannical conductors, has been music director of Harmonium for forty years. The world famous touring orchestra was created for him when he fled Czechoslovakia for America during the political turmoil in Eastern Europe in 1956. It is the eve of the opening of a dramatic new concert hall designed by Herza himself. It is also the eleventh hour of intense contract negotiations with the musicians that have strained relations within the organization. When the acting concertmaster, Scheherazade O’Brien, is summarily dismissed by the despotic Herza for the permanent concertmaster position, an audition she was poised to win, O’Brien slits her wrists and the orchestra becomes convulsed. Now, blind, cantankerous violin teacher Daniel Jacobus, who had shunned O’Brien’s earlier plea for help against Herza’s relentless harassment, investigates Herza’s dark past not only in Prague, but in Tokyo and New York. With the help of his old friends Nathaniel Williams, Max Furukawa, and Martin Lilburn, he seeks not only revenge but redemption from the guilt of his own past.